This is the part I don’t get either. If you’re not getting a Pitino, or getting a Tony Bennett to come out of retirement, just about everyone is a crapshoot. A few years ago everybody wanted Oats. That was a pipe dream. Many did not understand the change in the basketball landscape due to NIL. There are maybe 10 coaches that I believe strongly could coach anywhere. Oats may or may not be one of them.
I say that because many of the guys thriving in the SEC have SEC money. How good would they be somewhere else? Hard to say because they don’t move by their own choice. Hard to poach them. Then if you get even a proven guy like Buzz Williams, you could see how he crashed and burned at Maryland without A&M resources.
Cooley was “proven” and was supposed to resurrect Georgetown, it was a slam dunk. Everyone said so. But that didn’t happen. Again, very few guys are slam dunk hires.
Seton Hall made a great hire with Shaheen Holloway. If that guy wasn’t a Seton hall alum, he would be in demand, and would be much easier to poach than he is. That’s the kind of guy I want coaching my team and representing my university.
Give me McNamara over Red, and give me Fran Brown over Dino. Give me guys with passion over guys who appeared to be “mailing it in”, who always seemed way too comfortable with losing. I think Gerry is a winner and I would rather take a chance on him then take a chance on anybody else that might be in the running for our head coach. Because whoever we hire, we’re taking a chance on.
If Gerry wasn’t connected to Syracuse, everybody watching that Duke game would say “that’s a guy we need to hire”. He took a four win team to a tournament team, (almost beating Duke as a 16 seed, playing only five players) in just two years.